


🌀Category 5 || Miya Atsumu

by Rot_Llaves



Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [15]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Developing Relationship, Eventual Relationships, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff and Humor, How We Met, Inarizaki, Kita is a coach, Love, MSBY Black Jackals - Freeform, Meet-Cute, Miya Atsumu is a Little Shit, Miya Atsumu is hard to love, OC is a teacher, Paparazzi, Pining, Post-Canon, Returning Home, Romance, Slight aged-up characters, Song: Hard to Love (Lee Brice), Song: Storm Warning (Hunter Hayes)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24785377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rot_Llaves/pseuds/Rot_Llaves
Summary: "I really knocked ya off yer feet," he said, giving her a smile as he shook her hand. "But if ya give me yer number, maybe I could pick ya up again sometime?"The woman sized him up for a moment, seemingly running several calculations in her head, before giving him a tight-lipped smile."I'm sorry, Miya-san, but I prefer to keep my feet on the ground."
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Miya Atsumu/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720834
Comments: 3
Kudos: 63





	🌀Category 5 || Miya Atsumu

**Author's Note:**

> [ _⚠ A wordy short story with a lot of foul language.⚠_ ]

Miya Atsumu is kind of a cocky piece of shit and he knows it.

There are just some undeniable truths in his life that make that overwhelming, and frankly narcissistic, pride swell within him until it's pouring out of every crevice of his over-inflated being. He's good at what he does — and he knows it. He's got a killer body with thighs that leave people drooling and smile that could drop panties faster than gravity itself if he wanted to — and he knows it. His life is pretty fucking awesome — and he knows it.

But if there is any one undeniable truth that hovers around him and refuses to let go, it's that Miya Atsumu is pretty much insufferable and overexposure is practically imminent. It wasn't something he was particularly proud of but it was just another fact of life — "if you can't handle me at my worst" and all that jazz, he'd think.

He'd been more than happy to saunter through life that way. At the end of the day, he had redeeming qualities and only those who mattered needed to see them. It didn't matter if he was hard to get along with if there were still people who accepted him for who he was.

Kita Shinsuke was one of those few who saw through all his bullshit and knew that behind all the bravado was a guy in over his head with a fan base that didn't know when to quit. It was grounding in ways that Atsumu couldn't even begin to describe and while Kita hardly went out of his way to humble the budding athletic superstar, he was incredibly good at doing it. And he also knew when Atsumu needed to be reminded of his roots.

It was during a particularly tumultuous time in Miya's career when he had answered a call from his old captain, asking him to come back to their alma mater. It's not like things had exactly gone to shit, but he would say the situation he was in was ... unfavorable?

Practices with his team (the MSBY Black Jackals) had become particularly tense in the past month after he had one of his "I'm not the problem, my tosses are perfect" explosions on his monster hitters and they'd rightfully started teasing the ever-living fuck out of him. His girlfriend had just broken up with him — with the tearful excuse that she had it "on good authority" (her favorite gossip rag) that he was cheating. And to top it all off, his insufferable twin had just gotten engaged. (He was happy for him, somewhere deep, deep, deeeeeeep down, but man. C'mon Osamu — timing bro!)

The definition of what he was feeling was far beyond his grasps but he might have described it as being lost in an emotional fog... if he could think clearly.

Maybe Kita had taken advantage of that and knew exactly when to ask Atsumu to come back to Inarizaki, so he could exploit their friendship to make Kita look better in his first year as the school's new coach. Or maybe he knew that Atsumu needed to return home for some emotional grounding and personal rediscovery. Maybe it was both. (It was definitely both.)

Neither one of them knew that he would be late, but it had been one of those perfect lazy summer Fridays. Where the sun was out but it was just the right temperature — the kind of days that just lull you to sleep with how warm and peaceful they are — and he was back in his parents' home for the first time since he'd graduated high school, in his childhood bed and he and his brother were together for the first time in months.

In all that muddled perfection, something had to go awry.

So, he had been reduced to running down the school halls, feeling some semblance of nostalgic fear at keeping his former captain waiting in the gym. (He could hardly say he was aiming to be fashionably late to such a serious and dedicated man and, honestly, who wants to admit to thinking about how they'd appear to some high school brats.)

If he had been able to watch his life from above, he would have rolled his eyes in mild disgust at how cliche the next part went. But he was living his life, not watching it, and he also wasn't watching where he was going.

Their collision was just an elbow shove shy of brutal and both of their phones had flown so hard and so fast that it was a miracle that neither cracked. Atsumu hadn't felt much, other than the phone leaving his hands, a insignificant pain in his forearm and the ricochet of someone bouncing off of him. The woman on the floor, several feet in front of him, hadn't been so lucky.

Her inky black hair was thrown across her face and the floor and she'd never been so thankful that she decided to wear biker shorts beneath her white summer dress, which no doubt had gathered the remnants of shoe tracks across her back.

She groaned lightly as she rubbed the back of her head with one hand and fought the stray hairs stuck in her lipstick with the other. Without bothering to give her assailant a glance, she began to search for her cellphone only to find a man crouched down before her with his hand held out.

"It seems you've fallen for me," Atsumu teased as she reluctantly took his hand and allowed him to help her up. She shot him one of those looks that made him feel like she could instantly pinpoint every insecurity he kept locked away in his heart and then she detached her hand from his to brush her skirt clean.

"Oh, you must be the insufferable, 'amazing alumnus' everyone wouldn't shut up about today," she mused as she fixed her hair, taking in all the clues of his identity that she could — noting the MSBY gym shorts paired with his old Inarizaki tee and that god forsaken smirk the women in the teacher's lounge kept giggling about .

She took a moment to gather herself, brushing her skirt down and then patting her hands clean upon it, before sticking out her palm in an informal greeting.

"Your reputation precedes you, Miya-san," she said with a grin. "But I didn't think they meant literally when they said you could blow a woman away."

If he were a better man, or perhaps if this introduction had happened in this same hall a few years ago, he would have paused at her flawless recovery and taken a beat to admire the moment as it was. But he was a flirt in a hurry and he never lost a battle of words.

"I really knocked ya off yer feet," he said, giving her a smile as he shook her hand. "But if ya give me yer number, maybe I could pick ya up again sometime?"

The woman sized him up for a moment, seemingly running several calculations in her head, before giving him a tight-lipped smile.

"I'm sorry, Miya-san, but I prefer to keep my feet on the ground," she responded. "Besides, I believe Kita-san is waiting for you."

"Oh shit, right," he had exclaimed before moving toward the gym with quickened steps — this time without a phone in his hand.

It was still on the floor.

Kita was, of course, annoyed with how late Atsumu arrived at the gym, but immediately put him to work and soon all thoughts about the (literal) run in, about the paparazzi and the stress of his job were lost to incessant questions of star-struck players and the repetitive bounce of the ball as he struggled to put his actions into imitable words.

The training didn't stop until hours later, when the air was a little cooler, the sun had sunk low enough to paint the sky in purples and oranges, and the exhaustion in the room was punctuated by the heavy breathing sounding from hunched over boys. Despite pants, there was a wide smile on Atsumu's face as he clapped his former captain on the back with a heavy hand.

After a brief water-filled intermission, Kita turned toward the visiting setter and asked him to share some parting words with the team. Instead, Atsumu delved into a story about the boys' coach in his high school years, exaggerating some minor points for the laughs while being sure not to press too many of the ashen-haired man's buttons.

Atsumu was set to end his spiel with softer words about working every day to make your teammates proud, but, suddenly, Kita's attention wasn't on him anymore.

"Uehara-san? What brings you to the gymnasium," Kita asked, looking past Atsumu to the woman standing in the doorway. She stepped forward with something close to hesitance as she bowed her head in a silent apology for the intrusion and turned toward the visiting alum.

"Typhoon-san over here left quite a mess in his wake when he barreled through the hallway earlier," she said with a teasing smile. "I just came to return some debris he left behind."

Quietly, she handed over the black cellphone in her hands before turning toward the coach with a light smile on her face as he dismissed the team. They shared a few words about how she had met the aforementioned hurricane in the hall earlier, Kita throwing a disapproving look over her shoulder toward Atsumu, and then she excused herself with another apology for interrupting the end of practice.

"Try not to crash into anyone else on your way out, Typhoon-san," she teased as she sent Atsumu a light wave and left.

Atsumu whirled around as soon as her frame moved beyond his vision and tried his best to look calm as he asked (begged) for her name. Kita wasn't feeling particularly benevolent, considering the setter's late arrival to his own training workshop, and, while he had intended for his kohai to refresh himself by returning to his roots, he hardly meant for Atsumu to do so by pining after a woman teaching at their alma mater.

"I hardly think you have business pestering our new fine arts teacher," Kita responded, evading the request.

"Hmmm, so she teaches fine arts," Atsumu pondered. "And she's new? I think that's enough to get answers out of the principal. Thanks senpai!"

Although Atsumu's mischievous grin was met with the kind of deadpanned eyes and hard frown that screamed "you're so unamusing I'd rather off myself than be in your presence another moment," Kita's mind was whirring with internal debate. Would it be worse for Atsumu to bother the principal with such an asinine request because of him or for Uehara-san to find out that _he_ was the reason the setter knew who she was.

Neither option was particularly appealing but he thought that, maybe, he could handle the wrath of the raven-haired teacher if it kept the principal from refusing to allow Atsumu to hold clinics with the team.

"Uehara Megumi," he said with a heavy sigh. "She started at the beginning of the school year. The students like her class because she gives them a lot of freedom on assignments — something about how true expression shouldn't be hindered by strict guidelines with no room for interpretation. I don't really get it, but..."

"Yeah, yeah," Atsumu interrupted as Kita began to ramble. "She's something else."

Kita narrowed his eyes at his former teammate as he tried to work out where Atsumu was going with this. The setter just looked on with a half smile and hopeful eyes that caused the coach to purse his lips and look away.

"I'm not giving you her number," he said flatly, moving to pick up his clipboard and organize the items strewn across the bench.

That was the day Kita learned his resolve wasn't as rock-solid as he thought it was.

Atsumu called her that night and if he hadn't been completely blindsided by her, he maybe would have had enough rationality within him to realize that this was incredibly unlike him — to not only call first but to do so mere hours after getting her number.

Honestly, he was lucky she was the type of person to answer unknown numbers (she claims it's for the adventure of the unfamiliar) and he was almost surprised when she answered with a tentative "hello" after the third ring.

"Hi, yes, this is yer insurance company callin' in regards to your claim to some recent typhoon damage."

"Kita-san and I are going to have to have a discussion about boundaries tomorrow," Megumi sighed, pulling her hair down from the bun she had haphazardly tied when she arrived home hours ago.

"Don't be too hard on 'im," Atsumu said through a chuckle. "It's not easy sayin' no to me."

"I didn't have a problem with it earlier," she replied.

"Okay, okay, I concede," he laughed. "But really, don't give Kita too hard of a time. He's a good guy — coachin' those kids in his free time from the farm."

"Kita-san truly is a saint among men. It's a shame I'm stuck on the phone with someone who has quite the opposite inclination," she mused.

"I'm insulted," he replied, feigning the emotion. "I'm quite the char--"

"Charm isn't exactly a holy attribute," she interjected. She was met with silence that she soon filled with laughter. "Try again."

"Give me a chance," he offered, his words slightly more heavy but still holding on to that smug, flirty air. "I promise it will be worth it."

"So, you weaseled your way into getting my phone number and now you want me to trust my heart to you," she asked in a way that made him unsure if she was teasing or not. (She wasn't.)

"Well, you could look at it this way: If I was willin' ta work this hard to get yer number, then imagine the lengths I'd go to make ya happy," he propositioned.

"I assume the same lengths you went to make the last woman in your life... and, where is she now," she accused. "Ah, that's right — on the cover of magazines lamenting how little you loved her."

"That's hardly fair," Atsumu shot back through a groan. "Emiko _cheated_ on _me_."

"Because of loneliness, if I recall."

"Ya know, for a woman who acted as if she didn't know who I was, ya sure know a lot about my love life."

She could practically hear his grin through the phone and it simultaneously made her want to groan and reach through the line to slap it right off of his face.

"I did some research when I got home," she replied, trying to sound nonchalant. "It's hardly my fault your name tops so many headlines."

"That's hardly a denial of interest," he pointed out, ignoring the jibe. "So, I think ya should give into that interest and let me take ya out — show ya a good time."

His request was again met with a scoff and, though he couldn't see it, an eye roll as Megumi attempted to keep within her self-imposed daily sarcasm limit.

"I'm not really looking for your kind of excitement," she responded before pausing and realizing that, despite the incredibly bad pick up lines, she didn't have any solid reason not to at least give the guy a chance. Sure, he was written off as a playboy with a bad attitude but hadn't her mother taught her to look beyond the surface — isn't that what she told her students all the time? "But... I guess it doesn't hurt to try for something I wasn't looking for."

Atsumu nearly choked. "Wait. What? Really?" _Oh real smooth, Atsumu._

"Mmhm," she replied through a light chuckle. "So you better bring your A Game, Fly Boy."

Their first date had been nothing like she expected — mostly because, despite some mild research she hadn't expected her date to have a twin brother who just happened to own a restaurant and Atsumu hadn't expected his brother to completely sell him out. The night was filled with stories of the older twins (endearing) failures and the younger brother's good food. And despite the night ending with a starry walk to her apartment, a goodnight kiss on the cheek, and both the promise that the date was nice and that there would be a chance for another, the happiness bubble could only last so long before it popped.

After a solid month home he had to go back to facing the reality of the life he chose for himself and he was forced to leave both the comforts of Hyogo and of a good woman. But she had promised him that she'd hardly be waiting — no, she'd be active in his life in any way he wanted, because relationships take mutual work and compromise — because reality was facing them on the other side of their month together and she was going to have to be strong to keep them together.

It was then he'd come to realize another inarguable fact of his life: he was incredibly hard to love.

Idolize? Sure. Hate. God, yes. Worship? If you're willing. But love? The only people who loved him unyieldingly were his parents (who, I mean, kind of had to) and his brother, who showed his love through competition and teasing. He'd had plenty of women vying for the spot on his arm, but they weren't the type to stay when push came to shove. Fight or flight could be a way to describe it. If they saw any chance for a fight, they flew away.

Let's be honest here: Miya Atsumu was the full package: a talented professional athlete with the looks and a notable personality to boot. But the package deal also included his unending hours of practice, games and team travel. It included his job sucking out all of his energy and depositing him at his doorstep with barely the energy to push the door open. It included the swirling rumors of new or secret lovers and compromising (or heavily edited) photos.

On top of those bonus features was the actual real him — the insensitive, argumentative, selfish person that he was — and finding someone to deal with(and just plain accept) the hellish combination of all of those amazing selling points would be nothing short of an act of God.

And yet, Megumi somehow did it with the grace and patience of Jesus himself (though even Jesus cursed a fig tree, once).

The first time the news of their relationship broke into the tabloids months later, the numerous headlines shouted out declarations of "Star Athlete Miya Atsumu Dates Nameless Teacher From Hometown." His serves at the following game had been particularly lethal, but his girlfriend took it in stride. When the game ended in a Black Jackal victory, the media cornered her instantaneously to talk about her budding relationship with the setter and her thoughts on the sport.

Despite feeling nervous about the video cameras all pointed her way, when the first question came at her, asking about the validity of the tabloid headlines, she was more than ready to take on the storm.

"Oh, they're completely false," she had said with nonchalance. "I clearly have a name and I'm a little shocked that anyone thought otherwise."

It wasn't the answer any reporter was expecting and after a beat of initial shock, one of them followed up asking if the relationship bit was true.

"Oh, that? Yeah, that part's totally true."

Atsumu had nearly spit out his sports drink when he'd watched her interview that night online. She hadn't even mentioned she'd been cornered when she had joined the team for dinner earlier that evening and she'd gone on home without saying a word.

It only got worse from there — not that she'd complained once. With their relationship confirmed and, pretty much, opened to the public for scrutiny the onslaught of outward pressures poured in.

_Miya Atsumu deserves better. She's just a high school teacher from the middle of nowhere. Even I would be better for him than her._

Here he was slowly sinking into the kind of love his playboy, fling-loving soul swore he would never, ever, in a million years, settle down into and all those people who would cheer his name — that he had thought were so fucking important to him — were suddenly questioning his choice in women. (They were questioning a goddamn teacher's worth when he'd been dating two-timing models most of his career!)

A gossip magazine had even gone out of their way to take up part of his girlfriend's busy day for a phone interview where they basically told her that her relationship with Atsumu was ill-favored by the public because of how unimportant Megumi was.

"Well, you let me know when Miya-kun has inspired someone to do something other than play with balls, and we can compare our long term effectiveness then," she was quoted in the magazine. "But I hardly see the point of placing our superficial popularities against the other when we're both just chasing our dreams."

He didn't know why she kept agreeing to the interviews — if maybe she was secretly a masochist or if she liked putting the tabloid writers in their place — but he never got tired of reading her responses and she never stopped surprising him. (Mostly because it seemed like his teammates or even, God forbid, his mom found the interviews before he did.)

The worst part of it, though, was that she kept showing him all the reasons he had to love her and he had the innate ability to do the exact opposite. He was insensitive. He had an incredibly short fuse. He had a tendency to put his desires and needs above everything else. He was a giant wrecking ball, crashing into her life and ripping her peace apart — doing everything possible to show how unquestionably hard it was to love him, despite how much he really, truly, loved her.

"Oi, if ya don't get over yerself and propose to that woman already, yer gonna wake up one day and see her on the front page in the arms of a much better man," Osamu had said to him during the reception of his own fucking wedding.

He'd legally binded his love a mere hours before and had enough gall to suddenly become a love expert during the reception as the pair of them watched Osamu's new wife dance wildly with (her likely future sister) Atsumu's girlfriend.

"Oh, now I see why ya proposed," Atsumu joked. "You're just trying to keep Hina-chan from a better man."

"Ya best your ass I am," Osamu shot back. "That's the difference between you and me, though, 'Tsumu. I know when I've got a good thing going and when to hold on to it."

Maybe that really was another one of his many shortfalls because not six months later he was going viral in all the wrong ways — his photo with a another woman in a small cafe was circling several social media platforms while online headlines bemoaned the comings of a cheating scandal between the homely teacher Japan had come to love and the nonredeemable volleyball playboy they all loved to hate (and hated to love).

He hadn't even left the establishment before recorders and cameras were in Megumi's face, miles away, as she left the neighborhood grocery store, chicken breast, scallions and potatoes tucked neatly in the brown paper bag in her arms.

The questions flew at her in the same way sharp objects would fly at an adventurer stuck in a booby trap and she tried her best to dodge around them with the same trained grace that experience had drilled into her body. No matter how sharp the words, though, not a single pointed question struck particularly deep as she kept her mind on how long she could entertain the paparazzi in the heat before her chicken de-thawed.

When a particularly young gossip reporter quipped about men never changing, Megumi finally decided that the chicken was frozen enough to allow giving into a little play time.

"Uehara-san, do you regret dating Miya-san, now that he's proven that some men just can't settle down," they asked, an equally young man standing beside them with a cheap camera at the ready.

"I'm under no assumptions that Atsumu doesn't know where his home is," she said, looking straight into the camera with a slight smirk on her face and glint in her eye that her boyfriend was more than familiar with. It was the kind that simultaneously scared the shit out of him — putting images of him crawling across his own home on his knees begging for forgiveness — and making him want to throw her against the wall and remind her just what the look does to him. "But if _you're_ worried, by all means, please feel free to remind him. I'll have dinner ready for him."

Atsumu shivered as the recording played on his phone as he walked up to the apartment they shared whenever he actually had time to return home. He didn't deserve this woman. He knew. She knew it. Even his fucking brother knew it. And yet she stuck around for some unknown reason.

He shouted out his arrival to the scents of dinner as he opened the door and dropped his keys on the small table to the right of the entrance. Megumi's face immediately popped out from around the corner that hid the kitchen away from the entryway with a smirk on her face.

"Welcome back cheater," she said through her smile. "How was Emiko-chan?"

"It only took me 30 seconds to remember why we didn't work out," he joked back at her, walking toward her back, now that she'd turned back to the cook top. "She didn't take the news too well."

"Ah, well, she probably thought you were crawling back to her — not giving her advanced notice of your forthcoming marital bliss. It was probably a shocking blow to the universe that revolves around her."

"I still don't know why ya insisted that I tell her before the public announcement," Atsumu laughed as he wrapped his arms around her waist and trailed his nose from her collar bone up her neck. "She hardly deserves the courtesy."

"Is it wrong of me to hope she'll tone down the drama if she's not blindsided," Megumi asked, turning around in Atsumu's arms to face him after switching the burner off. "On the other hand, I'm rather upset that my meeting with Kita-san didn't make headlines — he wished us the best, by the way."

Atsumu groaned, leaning his head down onto her shoulder. "I still can't believe ya dated that rice farmer."

"I would hardly call two dinner dates a serious arrangement," she quipped. "But, regardless, he was the last person before you and those were your terms for meeting with Emiko-chan."

"I knew I should have questioned why the volleyball coach even had ya phone number in the first place," he mumbled into her skin.

"Oh, get over yourself," she laughed, pushing him before lightly tapping his cheek with her fingers in slow, teasing pats. "Only you could have a woman accept your proposal and still be salty about her past lovers."

Megumi dropped her hand away from his face before stepping around him and untying her apron. She hung it on an open cabinet door and exited the kitchen, asking him over her shoulder to plate dinner. He watched her departing figure with fondness before his face contorted.

"YA NEVER CALLED HIM A LOVER BEFORE MEGUMI," he shouted after her as her laughter echoed down the hallway.

"Get over it Atsumu," she yelled back.

Slowly, a smile crept it's way across his face as he turned to the open cabinet on his right and pulled out two dishes before returning to the still-steaming skillet on the stove. To the world, it would be such a strange sight watching _the_ Miya Atsumu being so domestic and so incredibly in love.

He had a reputation. One that he hadn't been entirely untrue and followed him around wherever he went. So, he'd admit: he's so fucking hard to love — he knows it — but, God, Megumi is so easy to get swept up into. And that, now, is just one more of his undeniable truths.


End file.
